Various Thoughts

I posted these elsewhere, starting way back on July 23, but may as well cross-post here for consolidation purposes and ease-of-access:

 

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Just started playing Ys Chronicles in preparation for watching Minna Atsumare! Falcom Gakuen. It was cheap on GOG a while back so I thought “Why not?”.

Looks very good. Very modern, quite Anime. We’ll see how the gameplay is.

 

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Ys Chronicles‘ gameplay is a little tricky. Having to run into the enemy at just the right angle is kind of a pain. Normal map monsters seem to be weak enough that this isn’t really much of an issue, but boss fights (based on the one boss I’ve encountered so far) appear to be bullshit.

The boss itself wasn’t very strong, but the area you have to fight him in is full of flaming death that’s pretty much impossible to avoid if you want to hit him. So the fight basically boiled down to hoping my attacks would kill him before the flames killed me (since healing is limited while in battle).

Hopefully most boss fights aren’t like that, as Touhou-like frame-based sprite-dodging is not my forté. The second boss was a lot easier at least; no environmental hazards to worry about.

 

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Remaining Ys I Bosses: The vampire is incredibly annoying, the mantis is a pushover, the molten rock thing is a pain, the twin heads start out hard but quickly become simple, and the final boss is bullet hell incarnate. 30 or so minutes of thumb-bruising flailing about to get just the right sequence of hits in.

That 25-floor tower is also just plain tedious, what with the backtracking and the fact that you’ve almost certainly hit max level before even entering it. At least the floors are small.

Such relief now that that’s over. On to Ys II.

 

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Ys II is far better balanced than the prequel.

– Normal map enemies are more deadly and stay that way significantly longer, meaning that even with 6 levels on them they can kill you if you’re especially careless.
– Bosses aren’t particularly annoying and can be beat without having to have excessive twitch-gamer skills.
– The level cap is much higher and won’t be reached until nearly the very end of the game, and only then with time spent grinding. So killing things never feels useless.
– The ending credits scroll faster and there’s stuff going on in the background so that watching them no longer seems like a punishment for winning.

With that duology now out of the way, I think I’m going to move on to Suikoden IV next. Already completed III and V some time ago, but had skipped IV due to some of the criticisms leveled against it (mainly reduced party size & grindy travel). Time to see how accurate those complaints are.

Update: Protagonist is ugly and the ship controls are awful. Annoying.

 

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Finished Suikoden IV. It was… not so great really. Okayish I guess, but rather small/short, annoying with all the random encounters, and the ending is kind of spontaneous.

Going to try Suikoden Tactics now (which appears to effectively be a storyline sequel to Suikoden IV) before maybe moving on to Phantom Brave.

 

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So I’m reading this FAQ covering Suikoden Tactics, and in the introduction it goes on about how this is one of the easier sRPGs to get into. Said it’s easier than Final Fantasy Tactics and less complex than Disgaea.

Less complex than Disgaea I will give it, but it does not seem to be easier than FFT. There’s tons of enemies on the maps, magic points can’t be recovered in battle and there don’t seem to be any infinite-use active abilities, the equivalent of FFT‘s Job Propositions require certain (hidden) character attribute scores in order to succeed, neither character class nor weapon type can be changed, there’s the constant threat of environmental terrain hazards, and you don’t get immediate access to any re-visitable training maps.

It gives me a sort of Tactics Ogre vibe really. A less complex Tactics Ogre. And that relative lack of complexity is what actually makes it harder… since you have less methods available to you to accomplish your goals.

 

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Suikoden Tactics now finished, it gets quite a bit easier once you get access to the repeatable ‘Hunt Monsters’ maps. You can pretty quickly outlevel the storyline enemies by just doing a couple of those and the “Gather # Items” quests. At that point the lack of variety in the combat abilities really starts to bite, as the vast majority of the characters are interchangeable. The plot developments aren’t anything all that exciting either… though the ending does contain a nice reveal.

Suikoden Tierkreis is up next, which will complete the franchise (the newer Gensou ones for the PSP have not been translated, and so I’m not counting them).

 

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Finished Tierkreis a bit earlier today. It’s surprisingly robust for being on a handheld, and fits in with the other Suikoden games well (bad voice acting and all). The difficulty level is pretty low overall, though things got a bit dicey with the final boss when it decided to use its ultimate attack 3 times in a row.

Not sure what’s going to be next. Possibly Titan Quest, but I just grabbed Heroes of Might and Magic III–V plus Chronicles from the GOG Ubisoft sale a little while ago and so may go with them instead. Of those four I’ve only played V before, long ago when it first came out, but abandoned it on the final level (which was unnecessarily complex).

 

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Decided to go with neither and play through the Quest for Glory series (which was picked up at the GOG summer sale) instead. Had only played/completed the 5th installment before.

 

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QfG 1-3 complete, but ended up stalled starting 4. Why? Because of the Might and Magic Humble Bundle, which included a starter set for Duel of Champions (which is sort of like a more restrictive Magic: the Gathering Online). Played it quite a bit back in the day and had around 3000 cards before losing interest. Now there are 4 completely new sets and tons of new achievements to unlock (achievements grant free in-game money, cards, and packs) so I’m getting back into it.

Referral link for that is: JKAYGA.

 

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